Mail presented to the post office for delivery is required to have sufficient postage. A discount is provided to high volume mailers when the mail presented to the post office meets an elaborate set of preparation requirements. These presort requirements cover physical order of the mail pieces, proof of postage for each mail piece and documentation for the mail run. Ascertaining appropriate payment of postage is often a problem when no indication of postage payment, such as a postage indicia, is present on the mail pieces.
Acceptance of the mail by the post office usually involves using a scale to weigh individual mail pieces and a calculation of the number of mail pieces. This is then multiplied by the piece postage rate to determine total postage required. The physical order of the mail is checked against the mail's documentation and presort requirements. Groups of mail pieces that do not meet presort requirements are called residual mail pieces which require additional postage. Mixing of non-identical weight pieces in a single run inhibits the ability of the post office to calculate a piece count by using a scale. By taking advantage of the ratio of mail pieces vs. conventional scale round off, it is possible for a mailer, or other individual, to "salt" the mail run with mail pieces for which no postage has been paid. By "salting" is meant the adding of mail pieces for which postage has not been paid.
Although "salting" is not a problem with mail pieces that have an indication of postage payment thereon, such as a postage printed indicia or a postage stamp, permit mail and manifest mail presents a problem, because there is no such evidencing of the payment of the postage on the face of the mail piece and the post office must rely upon the representations and presentations of the mailer upon acceptance of the mail therefrom. As was stated previously, although measures can be taken to assure that the number of mail pieces in a tray is correct when the mail pieces have substantially the same weight, there is no easy method of doing this with a batch of mail in which the weight of the mail pieces varies from piece to piece.
Clearly, it would be advantageous to provide a system and method whereby a mail batch containing mail pieces with different weights can be presented to the post office in such a way that the post office is assured that sufficient postage payment has been made for the mail received from a mailer.